By SangEun Lee
Yen Press, 180 pp.
Rating: T-L (Teen, Language)

Hee-So is totally in love with Won-Jun. Won-Jun is, in fact, her destined lover. She loves Won-Jun so much that she was just too shy to ask him out, so she wrote hundreds of letters to a game show so that she could ask him out on national television. Won-Jun accepts and the two start dating, but unfortunately, Won-Jun just isn’t feeling it after a month, and he dumps Hee-So without much explanation. Hee-So refuses to accept this, and after some initial digging, finds that Won-Jun might be in love with his best friend Whie-Young. Still undeterred, Hee-So does everything she can to get the full story on Won-Jun and Whie-Young and make sure that Won-Jun falls just as hard for her as she has for him.

On its surface, 13th Boy seems like the type of shojo series you’ve read a hundred times. Hee-So is the typical shojo heroine who is obsessed with her boyfriend. Won-Jun is the standoffish object of affection. Pretty much everything that these two characters say and do reeks of average. In fact, one of the reasons that I didn’t warm up to it sooner was the fact that Hee-So is initially so unlikable.

But everything else about this book was, at the very least, unusual. While it’s still an assumption at this point, I liked the fact that Hee-So was dumped by Won-Jun over his potential crush on Whie-Young. Hee-So actually mentions a few times how difficult that will be for him, something you never see acknowledged in boys’ love stories. The fact that this reads a little like a more realistic counterpart to any BL series where the main character dumps a girlfriend in favor of a guy is pretty unique.

The title of the series comes from the fact that Hee-So has dated so many boys. Won-Jun is boy twelve, and she just doesn’t want to move on to boy thirteen. It is implied that Whie-Young might have romantic feelings for Hee-So, even though he doesn’t seem to really like her, and later it’s revealed that the two share a common fanaticism for the super-popular drama “Deadly Love.” There’s a strange romantic triangle between Whie-Young, Won-Jun, and a childhood friend of theirs. I liked that this romantic triangle, somewhat more involved than the potential one among the main characters, had nothing to do with Hee-So. There’s also the fact that, while Hee-So is fond of talking about how Won-Jun is her destined lover, she seems more in love with “destiny” than the boy himself.

Also, there are any number of really strange things going on, weirdest among them is the fact that Hee-So is advised at home by a tiny talking cactus named Beatrice. There’s also the fact that Hee-So couldn’t work up the nerve to ask Won-Jun out, so she decided to do it on a game show. This strikes me as extremely mortifying, but perhaps some people need more of a push than others.

Despite the fact it has the skin of a pretty average shojo series, 13th Boy has a lot going for it. Between the main girl getting dumped for a guy, her fondness for cacti, the fact she decided she has a destined love based on an old drama and that destiny seems to be backing her up at the end of the volume, the series is full of fun and surprising plot twists. I’m very much looking forward to future volumes.

Volume one of 13th Boy will be available on June 9, 2009.